Yesterday, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced that many of the world’s largest brand advertisers and agencies have pledged to require their ad partners to take commercially reasonable steps to help fight the $2.4 billion lost to pirate sites each year.

Tuesday night, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to repeal an ordinance prohibiting the advertisement of soda on public property. The ordinance, which we discussed in a blog post in July, threatened First Amendment rights by ignoring free speech precedents set by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a surprise vote on Tuesday at the Interim Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA), the physician group adopted a policy aimed at banning direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising. The group will now begin lobbying Congress for a ban on these ads.

A new report released today examines advertising’s contribution to U.S. GDP and the economy in general. The report found that advertising contributed an astounding $3.4 trillion to the U.S. GDP in 2014, comprising 19 percent of the nation’s total economic output. This is roughly equal to the total GDP of Germany.

Congress has just experienced some exceptionally significant changes in the past weeks. John Boehner’s retirement led to the elevation of Paul Ryan (WI-1) as the new Speaker of the House last week, vacating his former position as Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. Now, Congressman Kevin Brady (TX-8) has become the new Committee Chair.

The First Amendment is the ultimate safety net for the marketing community. Since 1976, advertising has been afforded strong constitutional protection in a series of decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As the Dublin meeting of ICANN approaches, the two major topics of discussion were to be Accountability (reforming ICANN accountability mechanisms) and IANA Transition (how the technical functions of ICANN are to be handled post-US government supervision).

Yesterday’s landmark European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling declaring the EU-US Safe Harbor agreement immediately invalid has raised many potentially serious barriers to international information transfer that, if not resolved quickly, could hobble businesses, including the advertising sector, which operate in both the United States and in Europe.

Penned by Dan Jaffe, the ANA's group executive vice president of government relations, this blog focuses on advocacy initiatives and key legal/regulatory issues that threaten national advertisers' freedom of commercial speech.